- Tesla Motors
- Tesla Roadster
Tesla Motors today became the first American car company to make an initial public offering since Ford did so in 1956. And one could argue the sleek, fast Tesla Roadster the company has been selling is in some ways a bit like Ford’s old Model T, which revolutionized assembly-line manufacturing.
Tesla seems poised to be part of the redefinition of the way we drive. After all, the Palo Alto, Calif., electric-car maker has in many ways been showing the rest of the auto industry how electric cars are done. The sleek Tesla Roadster is an emblem of electric cars’ potential in terms of power, speed and range. Without it I doubt many of the larger car makers would be pursuing electric cars as vigorously as they are. Still, I worry about Tesla’s endurance. Building cars is a difficult, expensive endeavor that has broken many small manufacturers who have tried to bring innovation to the table, from John DeLorean to Preston Tucker.
For now the outlook is promising. Not only did the IPO take place but it included more shares at a higher price than expected. The company boosted the number of shares to as much as 13.3 million and the price to $17 per share, for a total value of $226 million. The company previously had said it could sell up to 11.1 million shares at a price of $14 to $16 per share, or a total of $178 million. The increase in part reflects interest in electric cars that is greater than expected and growing surprisingly fast. Tesla is trading on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbol TSLA.
Recently many companies have been cutting the size of their IPOs because the stock market has been so volatile. So Tesla must feel it has something special, and it does. The company has sold more than 1,000 Roadster in the last two years and is still the only true volume seller of highway-worthy electric cars for consumers. It will be awhile before companies like Nissan, BMW and Mitsubishi catch up.
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